The Turbulent Tub

Kate leaned on the railings of the deck as dusk overtook the ship. The thick clouds overhead, which had made the dusk especially early and especially dark, promised a storm; Kate didn’t think she’d mind if this particular promise was broken. The water has been mostly still for the journey so far, in so far as sea water was ever still, but as the evening had dragged on, and dragged it certainly had, the waves had started to take out their repressed frustrations on the small ship. Served it right for barging straight through the waves’ home.
                Alone on the deck, Kate looked out distrustfully at the ocean, fixing it with a gaze which told it she wouldn’t be trifled with. The ocean returned the sentiment; neither one of them held much affection for the other. Kate tried to keep an eye on all of the water, but it was a lost battle from the start. There was just so much of it to keep a watch over and some of it was always creeping up behind you, or sloshing into the gap behind the washing machine to make some mould that you don't want.
                Kate flicked the butt of her cigarette into the sea, which the sea definitely didn’t appreciate. Littering was bad enough, but flicking the litter onto something else’s face was just antagonistic. As punishment, the sea rolled the ship gently to port, which was the exact wrong direction for Kate to be able to support herself properly. Instead, she took herself off for a slow stagger and tripped, only to be caught by one of the life rings. Kate didn’t feel very grateful towards it. Granted, it had broken her fall, but it also felt like it had broken her hip.
                The rolling ship plunged to its apex, indulging itself in a momentary stillness before a dramatic U-turn in roll-direction policy, complete with a spray of cold, salty water. Kate felt that a soggy and agonising hip was all the wrong kings of fun, and so took her chances with the unsteady footing of the ship’s deck. Gingerly she staggered her way back indoors with her black shawl wrapped tight around herself.
                She slammed the door behind herself and span the locking wheel to keep it shut. Shivering, Kate pulled her damp shawl off herself and shook the loose water off like a deconstructed dog; she supposed that’s how they would do it if they could unbutton their jackets. Rain began to splatter against the small porthole window in the door as the clearly honourable clouds kept their word and unleashed torrential precipitation on the ship – as if there needed to be even more water around.
                Kate just didn’t understand it - why did the water go to all the effort of evaporating into the sky, forming clouds and moving over to the mountains to rain on them, when all it ever wanted to do was run down to the bottom again as quickly as possible. It would have been much simpler just to say ‘No, I shall stay down here thank you very much’ and cut out the middle man with all that river and waterfall nonsense. Clouds which rained over the sea were twice as bad, because it was effectively just water walking in and out of the front door whilst an already late postman was desperately trying to get to the letterbox.
                Thankfully it was the last night of the voyage. She could soon separate the necessity of travelling from the dangers of drowning in fathomless icy waters, replacing it with good old fashioned road-accident peril. Much less soggy, and only turbulent for a few short seconds rather than this endless rocking and swaying. After tonight she’d never again need to get drenched in a salty spray just to have a smoke, unless she stayed at a really cheap hotel of course.
                Out of the corner of her eye, all the way at the end of the corridor, Kate saw movement. She turned her head just in time to see a pair of exquisite leather boots disappear around the corner. He was back – the mysterious cowboy!

                It had been a few days into the journey that Kate had first seen him – he had been standing at the aft of the ship, looking wistfully out to sea as the gentle breeze whipped his long, intricately embroidered suede coat. Propped up on the railings at the edge of the deck, he looked like someone had dressed a mannequin in a fancy dress costume and abandoned it on a budget ferry for reasons that no-one would dare to consider. At first, Kate thought her eyes were just deceiving her, and maybe it was simply a normal man in a long coat, gloriously decadent boots, and a muddy-brown Stetson. But then she saw that he even had spurs on, glinting in the sunlight like boot-mounted pizza cutters. They were the final straw. Spurs were only worn if someone was a cowboy or if they were riding a horse, and there weren't any horses on board; Kate would definitely have noticed them and the ferry company's tag-line was "Horse-free voyages since '97'”, in a feat of specificity so great that there must have been a life-changing story behind it.
                The crowd of people between Kate and the mysterious cowboy had been thick, enough so to make reaching him difficult. By the time she was close he had moved away unseen – for such an unusual fellow he was deft at disappearing into the background. From then on she had dedicated her free time to tracking him down. It can be surmised from that resolution, based on nothing more than a glimpse across the deck, that she had been desperately looking for something to do.
                The next time she saw him was at breakfast the following day, across the dining room and a bowl of muesli. He was nearby to the fresh fruit, and making a bee-line for the pastries. Kate didn’t think it was very good form to abandon a bowl of oats and fruit in pursuit of an unexplained gunslinger, and so wolfed down the remainder of her breakfast, trying to keep an eye on him the whole time. This course of action led to an unsatisfactory amount of spoon-face and was swiftly abandoned. By the time she’d gulped down the last of her suspiciously pale and milky ‘black’ coffee, the cowboy was nowhere to be seen. She scanned the length of the buffet from the bacon through to the toaster and right up to the croissants, but there was no sign of him. He’d done the breakfast dash.
                Later on that same day, Kate had been watching a film in the ferry’s ‘theatre’; even the sign above the door had quotation marks around it. It was a modest sized room with free-standing chairs arranged in 6 rows, all facing towards a projection screen. The film being shown, rather than a cowardly safe-bet blockbuster, was an independent foreign film in a language that Kate didn’t recognise. Even the subtitles had been rendered unintelligible as the film was being shown out of focus, for what Kate hoped were artistic reasons. It was about half-way through the film, and as far as Kate could make out there was some kind of commotion going on regarding an upturned wagon, although it may also have been a watermill. A group of black and white smudges were trying to enter the mill, or perhaps flip the wagon, but another group of smudges seemed intent on stopping them, or perhaps blurring into them. Either way, there was a small amount of indeterminate action going on and it was marginally more exciting than watching the other 3 walls of the room. That soon changed when the mysterious cowboy appeared at the doorway and took an empty seat in the front row. Kate was in the back, and her view was now obscured by the Stetson that he’d refused to remove indoors. Her enjoyment of the blurry blob adventure was inhibited somewhat, but it meant that for the remaining hour of the film Kate was able to keep her eye on the cowboy, via the silhouette of his wide-brimmed hat, and felt assured that she would be able to catch him as everyone stood to leave during the credits. As fate would have it, however, her own escape was delayed by a slow-moving old couple in the seats next to her. By the time she had managed to shuffle past, the cowboy was gone again. That was the last time she’d seen him, until now.

                Kate gave chase down the corridor. It was quiet in the halls of the ship, so it would be much more difficult for him to slip away this time. Trying to muffle her footsteps as much as high heels on a linoleum floor would allow, she jogged along the length of the hallway in a slight squat. Anyone who saw her might understandably reach the conclusion that she had soiled herself and was performing the scurry-of-shame back to her cabin, but that was a risk she was just going to have to take.
                Pausing at the corner and peeking round, Kate saw nothing; he was gone again. It was far too long of a corridor for him to have reached the other end unless he’d broken into a sprint, and even if he’d gone into one of the rooms branching off the hallway it would have taken him a good while to actually unlock the door – Kate rarely managed it in under a minute. Like the enigma he had always proven himself to be, the cowboy had mysteriously disappeared yet again.
                Dejected, Kate stood back up to full height, taking some small solace in relieving the back-ache that stooping was giving her. However, stretching her back out pulled her cold, wet clothing close against her body, making her flinch just in time to lose balance when the ship rolled again. The sea was not even close to being done with its grudge.

                Kate decided to make her way back to the dining room to have something to eat – dinner always cheered her up. The trip through the hallways was made somewhat more difficult than usual, however, by the choppy and boisterous waters throwing the ship around. With the inescapably unsure footing, Kate was really regretting wearing heels. If it kept going this way then she might start to regret having ankles.
                The heavily tabled dining space was dimly lit by yellowed electric chandeliers and furnished with what a budget ferry business mistakenly thought would pass for elegant décor. At the very least, the bar was well stocked and well attended by the ship’s barman; Kate felt like she had been leaning more and more on the gentle support of wine to get her through the journey as the days had passed, especially since most solid surfaces had started to move away underneath her.
                The barman was a nice chap but rather unfortunate of face. His nose was large and curved, as if someone had snapped a protractor in half and jammed it into his head, and his top lip protruded forwards to meet it. His sunken lower jaw added to the effect and gave him the overall appearance of a bird trying desperately to disguise itself as a human. To make things worse, the barman’s name was Finchus.
                “Hi Finchus.” Kate said, pulling up a stool at the bar.
                “Hello Kate.” He replied politely, using her forename on Kate’s insistence. She had never liked being called Miss Nomer; it just sounded wrong. “The usual?” he asked with a welcoming smile under his impressive beak.
                “Yes please.” She answered “And a packet of peanuts too, please.”
                “No problem at all.” Finchus replied jovially. “You’re looking a bit soggy this evening, if you don’t mind me saying. Did you try to get off and walk again?”
                “What? Oh, no. I was on deck and the water splashed over me.”
                “Ah, it’ll do that if you let it. Still, it’s better that the sea got you and not the rain - otherwise you would have been under the weather.” He said with a wry smile and a wink whilst he set her glass of ruby-red wine in front of her. Kate said thank you and tried not to encourage him.
                “And one packet of peanuts. £5.60 please.” He added, placing a packet on the bar in front of her.
                Kate fished around in her pockets and handed the money over, then dived into her nuts. She was starving all of a sudden and dinner wouldn’t be served for another half-an-hour.
                “Would you like one?” she said, holding her hand out flat towards him with a few nuts in her palm. Finchus moved his head towards her and she recoiled, thinking for a second that he was about to unleash a devastating peck at her hand with his powerful beak. She was sure that it would be able to crush small mammals without any trouble.
                “Um, no I’m OK thanks.” Finchus replied, not entirely sure of why Kate was flinching. Her face changed colour to match her wine. To escape the circumstances into which she’d thrown herself, Kate tried to change the subject.
                “Finchus, have you seen a man on board dressed like a cowboy?”
                “A cowboy? As a matter of fact I have. He’s been in here a couple of nights to drown himself in whisky. It seems like a rather expensive way to do it when there’s a whole ocean out there to use for free, but it’s his choice.”
                “You’ve seen him! What on earth is going on with that guy? Why is he dressed like that?” Kate asked, hoping that the stereotypical barman and heavy-drinker relationship would hold, and that the cowboy would have bared his soul to Finchus.
                “I don’t know.” Finchus told her, shattering all the illusions she’d built up over the last couple of seconds. “He mostly just keeps to himself and looks like a storm made manifest as a person to be honest.”
                “Oh well.” Kate said with a shrug. “He’ll have to remain a mystery I guess.” She sipped her wine.
                “So what are you planning to do when you get to shore?” Finchus asked whilst wiping a glass.
                “I’m going to an auction.”
                “Very nice. Buying or selling?”
                “Selling. I deal in antiques, and I’ve got an opal pyramid to put up. It looks promising for a good return.”
                “Opal pyramid, eh. Well, good luck with that. Remember me if you make your millions won’t you.” He said with a wink.
                “Hey, Oyster!” came an unnecessarily loud voice in Kate’s ear, brushing Finchus’ words aside. She grimaced; the voice belonged to man named Curtis, who had taken to calling her ‘the oyster from the cloister’ by a series of leaps of ‘logic’ which only he could follow. It related to her being closed up, like only an oyster could be, and being dressed in black a lot, like only a nun could be. Conveniently ignoring the fact that molluscs are famously averse to organised religion, the nickname stuck, but only with him. Kate felt that it wasn’t a fair thing to be called - she just liked black clothing, and didn’t like opening up to the kind of man who would call her the oyster from the cloister.
                Kate tried her best to ignore Curtis wherever possible. They'd been at sea for a week and it had taken far less time than that to establish that she didn't want to be around him. Unfortunately he didn't seem to be picking up on the not-so-subtle hints she dropped about that. Having just sat down next to her at the bar like that, she didn’t feel like she had much choice but to speak to him for a little while. Her stomach still sank though, because a while, however short, would always be too long when it came to speaking to Curtis.
                Reluctantly, Kate turned and smiled at Curtis as if she didn’t want to beat him around the head with a bedpan. She struggled to believe that she had fooled him, but it was worth trying to keep up appearances for one last night. Curtis was leaning back with one elbow resting on the bar, showing off a pudgy beer-belly. The two halves of his waistcoat seemed to be locked in an irreconcilable feud, each side straining to distance itself from the other as far as the buttons would allow. If Curtis didn’t take action soon there might be a permanent rift in his wardrobe.
                “Lager.” He said simply to Finchus. The barman diligently acquiesced.
                Kate noticed a small chain running from one of the higher buttons on Curtis’ waistcoat into his breast pocket. ‘On anyone else’, Kate thought, ‘that would be attached to a pocket watch. On Curtis it’s probably attached to a pork pie’. She surprised even herself and snorted with poorly stifled laughter.
                “Something up your nose, Oyster?”
                “Oh, er, no I-“ Kate started, but Curtis ignored her, as he so often did when talking to her.
                “What’s this ‘Oval Pyramid’ then?” he asked directly, not seeming to be embarrassed at listening in to someone else’s conversation.
                Kate couldn’t be bothered to correct or chastise him. She only had to keep it together for one more night. “It’s just a gemstone.”
                “Big? Heavy?”
                “Not really no.”
                “Hm. In that case I’d be careful around that cowboy if I were you.”
                Kate worried that if Curtis were her then her existence would have been marred by life choices much poorer than talking to a cowboy.
                “Why do you say that?” she asked, curious to find out more but feeling a little protective of the cowboy, since that was the natural opposition to Curtis’ stance. There was something unshakably untrustworthy about him which made Kate instinctively disagree with anything he said, to the point that if he showed her where to find the ladies room she would have proudly marched into the gents.
                Curtis leaned forwards. “He tried to steal some money from me. Threatened me. Do me a favour, since you’re so interested in him – if you do manage to catch up with him, which I would certainly advise against, steer him away from me would you?” He stood up again, as Finchus placed a pint glass in front of him on the bar. Curtis picked the glass up and dropped a handful of change where it had just been, ignoring Finchus’ outstretched hand.
                “See you later, Oyster.” He said, then clapped her on the shoulder. “Ugh.” He moaned, feeling how wet her shawl was. “Seems like the oyster from the cloister’s got a bit moister!” he said, walking away laughing to himself. Kate rolled her eyes. Finding that to be an insufficient display of her distaste, she tried desperately to roll her ears, nose and teeth too.
                “I can’t wait to never see him again.” She told Finchus once Curtis was out of earshot.
                “He’s not my favourite guest either, but he does know the price of his drinks. Even if he chooses to pay for them like an inconsiderate baboon.” The barman replied. This was a largely unfair statement, since no baboon had ever shown poor etiquette to Finchus before.
                “What do you make of that stuff about the cowboy trying to steal money from him?”
                “I don’t know I’m afraid. But he did seem serious about keeping your distance. Not that you’ve found that to be hard so far, of course.”
                “Hmm. If I had to put money on someone stealing something on this ship, Curtis would be my bet as the perpetrator, not the victim.”
                Finchus laughed, then moved down the bar to tend to another customer. Kate sipped at her wine, and the boat kept rocking.

                The dining room quickly filled itself with ferry-goers as dinner-time approached, each one of them eager to receive the disappointment that their evening meal would bring, and Kate moved from the bar to one of the large round tables. She kept her eyes open in case the mysterious cowboy appeared, but also so that she didn’t look like she was trying to sleep at her table – two birds with one stone indeed. Maintaining vigilance had the added bonus of allowing her to watch the other guests, as they attempted to conduct themselves in a respectable manner whilst the whole ship swayed and plunged underneath them. This was doubly entertaining when they had a new, full drink from the bar. Many a smart garment was lost to unnecessary staining that night.
                Once dinner had been served, the room was filled with valiant battles against the unruly ship. Gravy flowed like a river over tablecloths, wine spilled onto legs without discrimination, and even roast potatoes fell to the ground, defeated. One by one, the warrior diners laid down their arms and made their exit. Kate was one of the strongest, holding on to her gravy-slickened meat with the stubbornness of a starved wolf hanging on to a scrap of rabbit flesh. As she forced the last chunk of meat onto her fork, the ship took a particularly heavy roll forwards. Thinking quickly, Kate lifted the fork from the plate to prevent a catastrophic swiping of her peas onto the table. But, as the cruel fates of the sea would not be cheated, the ship then rolled back, swinging her arm back towards herself. Kate was powerless to intervene as she smeared a large gravy streak across her chest with her forkful of beef.
                That was it – she was beaten. Dropping her now fluffy beef back onto her plate, she swallowed the rest of her wine, reasoning that she was already failing to balance so getting tipsy was irrelevant, and left the dining room.

                Kate returned to her cabin to find that the door was still locked, just as she’d left it. This may not seem like a noteworthy occasion, but there was a problem - both the door and the lock were laying on the floor, having been splintered out of the doorframe by an application of great force. They were, therefore, not quite such effective measures for security and privacy as once they had been.
                The room was a scene of carnage. Every drawer had been pulled out and turned upside down, clothing littered the floor, and even the bin had been cast over. Kate regretted leaving the cabin in such a state, since it had now been witnessed by whoever had broken in. On top of that, the intruder had rummaged through everything in sight and added what little was possible to add to the mess.
                Kate stood in the doorway and tried to take stock of everything. Her purse had been with her at the time so that was safe, and it looked like all of her clothes and spare jewellery had been ignored. In fact, Kate couldn’t think of anything which mas missing - whoever had been here had been searching for something specific, most likely her opal pyramid. Shuddering at the invasion of her privacy, as well as her own stupidity for mentioning the gemstone to anyone, Kate patted the inside pocket of her black blazer and felt the reassuringly angular shape of the opal pyramid inside.   Trying not to disturb any of the door detritus or scattered belongings on the floor, Kate entered far enough into the room to reach the phone and called the porters to report the crime. Whilst the porters seeing all of her underwear scattered across the floor would be yet another invasion of her privacy, this was one that she had requested and therefore it didn’t taste as bitter. At least she could pretend the room had been tidy prior to the break-in, and lying to the custodial staff of a ferry was one of the few pleasures available to her at the time.
                Once the porters and the security team arrived, and Kate had explained at great length how the invader must have untucked her neatly made bed, creased all of her clothes and got flecks of toothpaste all over the mirror, she went out to the deck for a smoke. In the proud haze of her deceit, she didn’t notice the shadow emerge around the corner or the footsteps following at a distance behind her.

                A storm was kicking up vast and livid waves, inciting the once peaceful sea to should rise up against its maritime oppressor. This ferry had been dragging itself through the water's delicate surface for far too long. No-one would drag a boat through anyone else's face for even a moment, so doing it for over a week to the sea was a mark of the utmost disrespect. The water’s surface did its best to flip the ship over, tossing and rolling the vessel from one side to the other.
                The sea looked exactly like Kate felt as she leaned over the rails taking a drag- violated, apoplectic, and as vast as the horizon; she had been feeling self-conscious about her weight since eating all the rich ferry food, or at least smearing it across herself.

                “Hello Oyster” came Curtis’ voice from behind her, interrupting her wallowing. Kate didn’t understand how or why he kept creeping up on her, but she wasn’t a fan of it.
                “Curtis, please. I just want to be left alone for a while.”

                “I want exactly the same thing! So why don’t you hand over the Oval Pyramid and we’ll be about our business separately.”
                Kate turned around to face him, finally wearing an honest expression of revulsion. “What are you talking about?”
                “The gemstone you’re selling. I’ll be taking it.” He said, with an unnerving degree of certainty.
                “No you won’t. It was you who broke into my room, wasn’t it?” Super-sleuth Kate was on the case tonight.

                “Look, Oyster” Curtis said, ignoring her question as ever but paradoxically trying to sound friendly. Calling her Oyster was probably the wrong way to go about it. “I don’t want to hurt you, honestly, but you need to give me the pyramid don’t you? Otherwise I’ll have to hurt you, and then neither of us will be happy.”
                “Well please forgive me if I don’t cry for you, Curtis, it’s just that you’re being a thieving slime ball. You’re not getting it.”
                Curtis’ veneer of false-sympathy melted away like new carpet underneath a hot iron and the result was a similarly twisted mess. He stepped towards Kate and she couldn’t move away; backed against the railings, she felt rather foolish.
                “This is your last chance, Oyster. I'll crack you open and take your pearl if you make me.” Curtis was barely an arm’s length away and still closing the gap. Kate shook at the look in his eyes.
                “I won’t be bullied.” She said defiantly, still shivering but pretending to be brave. She was doing a very good job of it, which unfortunately only made things worse; rather than continuing to try to intimidate her, Curtis grabbed the front of her coat with one hand. He slammed the other first into Kate’s screaming face as her bravery proved to be fleeting.
                Kate’s eye began to swell around the graze Curtis’ blow had left. It would have been peculiar to swell anywhere else, and the time for whimsy was long past.
                “Hand it over! Now!” he screamed in her face. She spat at him, apparently channelling her inner llama. Curtis was not a trained llama handler however, so he took the unorthodox disciplinary technique of lifting her off the ground and pushing her torso over the railings. The majority of frightened animals will begin to misbehave even more when subjected to this particular treatment.
                Kate shrieked as she looked at the black, frothing water below. The storm still raged and the ship still rolled unpredictably – Curtis wouldn’t be able to hold onto her for long.
                “If you drop me then the pyramid is gone, you cretin!” Kate screamed at him, hoping that he’d try to win her approval if she insulted him. It was an outside shot, but all she really had to work with.
                “I get it or you die, Oyster. It’d be a great shame if I saw you slip overboard during the storm, but maybe I can save you for a price! Better be quick though, I’m already tired from smashing your door down, and I’m already pissed off from hiding while I waited for you to stop talking to the porters, you lying cow. Your room was a tip!” The rain was falling hard, soaking them both through. With every passing second, Curtis’ grip came closer to slipping. If pushed to describe the situation, then between the impending death and the embarrassment of lying about her bedroom tidiness Kate would have called it ‘a right git’.
                Above the crashing of the waves and the beating of the rain, Kate heard a metallic jingling coming from the deck, as if a set of keys had taken themselves for a stroll in the evening rain. Knowing that keys much prefer hiding to running away, Kate could only assume it was the mysterious cowboy.
                “Now I admit that most sea-dwelling molluscs enjoy life more when they’re beneath the surface,” came a southern drawl which flowed like molasses over the sounds of the ship “but that oyster don't wanna be in the sea. She's a mighty peculiar one who likes the feel of dry land or solid ground beneath her feet. Why don't you go ahead and put her back on the deck like a good little boy, and then we'll have a nice chat about whatever grievance it is you have with the lady?”
                “Stay out of this, yank. When I sell the oyster’s oval pyramid I’ll have enough to pay you double.” Curtis shouted back.
                “I’m not so damn interested in her money, I want mine you thieving rat. Now put her back on the deck!” Kate let out a squeak as she felt Curtis flinch; the mysterious cowboy had produced a pair of shining steel revolvers as if from nowhere. It’s bad enough to be indebted to a cowboy, but when the cowboy is also a magician it pays to settle the account immediately.
                Slowly, Curtis dragged Kate back onto the deck, but then pulled her in front of himself as a human shield. Kate couldn’t help but feel that this wasn’t in the true spirit of the mysterious cowboy’s request, and she was repulsed by the feeling of Curtis’ warm, wet gut pressing against her back. Kate looked down, trying to duck her head away from the barrels pointing towards them, and saw that Curtis was wearing open-toed sandals with disturbingly off-white socks. She felt sick, it was just one more crime in a long history of offences.
                “Come on, boy! If that ain’t just the most yellow thing I’ve seen you do yet.” The cowboy was staring in disbelief at Curtis.
                “Put the guns down and kick them over, yank. Then walk away.”

Being alone with an armed Curtis was not something that Kate was going to allow. As quickly as she could, she lifted one foot and stamped hard onto Curtis’ toe with one of her hitherto impractical heels, feeling something crunch underneath it. He yelped in pain, and as his grip weakened she shook herself free, dropping into a ball and rolling to one side to get away. She scrabbled desperately to her feet, slipping on the wet deck and struggling with the turbulence. Curtis was crouched over his foot, blood soaking into his sock and screaming profanity as one might be expected to when losing a toe.
                The mysterious cowboy looked over at Kate and caught her eye, checking that she was OK. When she nodded he shrugged and lowered his guns. Then looked back to Curtis, and casually shot him in the other foot.

                Once again the porters were summoned to deal with a mess that Kate had left and subsequently blamed on someone else. She was certainly unique in the situations she gave them to clean up, but it didn’t really make it much more fun to take a mutilated cockney into custody. The rain and spray from the sea had done a marvellous job of cleaning the deck though – she had at least been considerate with her choice of location for toe removal.
                The mysterious cowboy walked Kate back to the wreckage of her cabin. She sat down on the bed and tried to motivate herself to pack everything away and move to another room – she didn’t much fancy sleeping at the door-less site of a burglary.
                “Y’all gonna be OK if get on my way? I still need to get my money back after all.” He was leaning in the doorway, still dripping wet from the rain.
                “Uh, yeah. Thank you for everything.”
                The cowboy tipped his hat. “Ain’t nothing.”
                “How did you know what was going on? I can’t believe you just stumbled across us.”
                “Well I was at the bar and little birdy told me what had happened, with this, y’know?” he gestured to the lack of a door. “He heard it on the staff radio or some such. And he told me about that precious stone y’all are trying to sell. I headed over to see if it was that snake Curtis, on account of him being a rotten thief, and the porters told me y’all went for a smoke. You know how the rest went down. But tell me, what is an Oval Pyramid? Wouldn’t an oval pyramid just be a cone, on account of ovals being like circles that someone’s sat on a bit?”
                Kate unzipped her pocket and took out the pyramid, twirling it in her fingers to show the cowboy. “It’s an opal pyramid, the precious stone, not an oval. Curtis is just a moron.”
                The cowboy laughed, like a muffled tractor engine struggling to start up. “A moron with a couple less toes than he oughta have. It’ll stop him running from the next person he tries to cheat, I hope.”
                “Yeah… was it really necessary to shoot his other foot? He was already bleeding from one crushed toe and you had him at gunpoint. I’m not convinced he was much of a threat anymore.”
                The cowboy smiled with one side of his mouth. “Well I admit that he wasn’t gonna be going too far too fast, but he needed a good shootin’ as I see it. For one thing, I don’t like a fella that hits a lady. For another, he stole from me and I don’t intend to let him forget it. And in any case, you gave him a perforatin’ with that heel of yours; fair’s only fair if I get to take some revenge too.”
                Kate laughed. It seemed like the mysterious cowboy was a simple kind of man after all.

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One Last Dance

The mahogany dance floor still shone under the flickering electric lights, save for the dark, worn streaks and marks which bore witness to its history and overuse - the memory of hundreds of songs and thousands of dances etched into it like laughter lines on an ancient face. The gramophone in the corner was outdated years before it had been installed, but it added character and a legacy to the strange dance hall in the vault. The thick steel door was sealed shut now, and its hinges wouldn’t be moving again. 

                James stood tall, proud and handsome in his freshly tailored green suit. He had been waiting patiently but anxiously for Sophia, eager to see her, but nothing could prepare him for how elegantly she swept into the room and onto the dance floor in her flowing, newly crafted dress. It cascaded onto the floor, gliding behind her as she moved gracefully towards her partner, with an uncharacteristically shy smile as she quietly worried that a dress made from military fatigues might look silly.
                James thought she looked anything but silly, but he knew that underneath her expertly sewn hem lurked a pair of combat boots, and it made him grin from ear to ear. She had done a superlative job in making them something to wear in such a short time, and with so few resources; the seamstress-turned-soldier was full of surprises, even now. Some of them were things he knew, or at least, things he had known once, so maybe they shouldn’t have been surprises after all, but it all felt like knowledge from a lifetime ago. Everything was coming back to him now though, and pushing all of the darkness of the war out of his head. The sight of her cleared even the deepest recesses of his thoughts with the incandescence of her love, like a sunrise spilling through the window in a cluttered attic. She was the centrepiece of his mind, the only thing in the room that he saw, and certainly the only thing left in the world that mattered.

                As she crossed the floor towards him, they were a world away from the pair of hunted, terrified soldiers who’d run underground into what they thought was a bunker or safe haven. Bloodied and weary, they'd slammed the door shut, locked it behind them, and collapsed for rest. The operation had gone so far to hell so quickly.

                Lucas had been stopped by one of the military police inside the Unseen’s compound and panicked; he’d killed the man where he stood and stuffed the body into a supply crate. It was sloppy work, putting them on a timer, an ultimatum to complete their objective before anyone noticed the guard’s absence. By the time they'd reached the command centre there was already an alarm sounding, and they'd had to fight their way inside. That was when Dolly died, her head ripped apart by automatic fire. The rest of them sprinted into the target zone, upending tables as they went, and threw the explosives into place; a block in each corner of the conference room on the ground floor, directly underneath the commander’s office.

                Sophia took James’ hands and stepped close to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and looking up at his face. The lights reflected in his eyes and even the vault door shone like a steel sunrise behind him. James placed a hand on her waist and they began to move together, as the gramophone in the corner scratched out its song and filled the room with music one last time.

                They were surrounded in the conference room. A door on either side rendered cover scarce, and what little that could find was flimsy. They managed to cut down the first few guards to enter with sharp, accurate fire, but the advantage wouldn’t last any longer than that. The four guerrillas, James, Sophia, Lucas and Amy, all reloaded and looked to one another. A few deft hand signals gave the order to prepare to run. Silently, James counted to three with his fingers, and they leapt over the tops of the upturned tables.

                A deep rumble sounded from the surface above the dancers, but neither of them noticed the sounds of the war anymore; they were wrapped up in the dance and lost in the almost-forgotten comfort of each other. He span her round and she laughed the carefree and irresistible laugh he'd fallen in love with years before. It was like the war had been a fluid filling her lungs and driving the ‘Sophia’ out of herself, but she could breathe easy now. So could he, seeing that not even that un-waking nightmare could extinguish her happiness completely. Smiling, he lifted her, spinning circles while holding her slender, scarred body above his head.

                They burst out of the rear door of the conference room as a group of soldiers in black armour were taking up positions outside. Two of them fell immediately as James’ team ran outside guns blazing, and the rest ducked into whatever cover they could before shooting a deafening storm in return. The four guerrillas weaved, ran from cover to cover, and made as difficult moving targets of themselves as possible, but a few rounds still managed to graze past them. Burns and superficial cuts began to sting around their bodies and the familiar panic of impending death swirled in their stomachs as they sprinted to the garages. Sophia hurriedly tore the detonator out of her pocket and clicked the red button on top.

                It swelled Sophia’s heart to see him relax again; she didn’t think it had happened for years. She giggled as she whirled in the air, looking down at his smile. He barely tore his gaze away from hers – not to check the perimeter or keep one eye on a likely route of enemy approach. Not even a glance over one shoulder to double, triple, quadruple check that they weren’t being followed. His attention was all on her.

                James’ team reached the garage, shrouded in the smoke blowing over from the command centre, but found it being stormed by a group of shock troops; the cover for the escape team had been blown early. Silently, the four of them wrapped around the black-clad attackers, taking them in the back in the hope of saving whoever was still fighting inside. After a few seconds of intense fire, the shock troops were killed, and James’ team were able to see the aftermath of the assault. The escape team’s kill zone was a wide fan of gore and fury. A dozen bodies lay dead on the floor, and sitting back against the wall was a broken green and crimson mess. A mess named Gus. He was barely breathing, and his head drooped down limply. His weapon was still in his hand, but his grip was loose and failing. From the first look at him, they knew that there was nothing they could do – he’d been hit so many times that it was a miracle he hadn’t stopped breathing already.
                Bloody smears on the ground told the story of how he'd pulled Ben and Katie’s bodies close to himself; if they absolutely had to go down, it could only be together.

                "Keys." He wheezed at Sophia as she came close, offering a bloody fist full of glinting steel from his pocket. His hands were shaking with the exertion of a dead man in motion.

                James put Sophia down again, and they danced intricate serpentine forms around one another. Their boots made heavy impacts on the wooden floor, and their feet didn’t glide as easily across the polished surface as they should have done, but it didn’t matter. In perfect synchronisation, like two halves of a beating heart, they moved and whirled. Despite the wounds, despite aching, exhausted muscles, and despite the hell-on-earth erupting around them, they danced. The war wouldn't take this from them. This was sacred.

                Sophia put a bullet in Gus’ head to spare him the injustice of a slow death or being captured. He deserved so much better than this, but it was all she could give him. They all watched what she had to do with a grimace, but she herself was spared the sight by the tears in her eyes.
                The four of them piled into the one jeep that the escape team had left functional – everything else had been sabotaged to at least delay any pursuit. James revved the engine hard, racing out of the garage and heading towards the exit of the compound under a hail of fire. Large calibre mounted guns pounded at them, punching holes in the jeep's thin armour plates as the surviving guerrillas accelerated straight through the chain-link fence.

                The song finished, and the dancers collapsed into one another's arms, exhausted but happy. Happier than they had been for longer than they could remember.
                Steel rang on steel and echoed around their dance hall, their false sanctuary, the site of their last adventure together. The sharp ringing of the percussive beating on the vault door snapped Sophia out of the trance for a moment and reminded her of where they were, what they were doing, what they were waiting for...

                The scratching sounds of a record spinning again caught her attention. James was smiling at her still, his love penetrating through the fear and futility and bitterness. His hand extended.  Although he didn’t utter a word, he eyes said everything he had to – We’ve given the war enough. If these are to be our last moments, then at least let them be ours.

                James slammed on the brakes, skidding the abused vehicle to a halt just inside a dense pocket of woodland, mud spraying in a bough wave in front of the tyres, and shouted to bail out. The jeep wouldn't keep running for much longer with all the damage from the guns, and even a delayed pursuit wouldn’t be far behind them, so they needed to use this moment of concealment as best they could. There was no motion from the back. Sophia screamed at them to get out, but it was futile to give orders to a pair of corpses. Lucas and Amy were riddled with wounds from the heavy guns and had died in silence in the back. James cursed and kicked the wheel arch of the jeep, but they couldn't waste much time. Grimly, they heaved the bodies into the front seats, set the engine running and tried to make the weight of the Lucas’ foot hold the throttle pedal down. The jeep screeched forwards along the road as James and Sophia ran into the woodland, hearing the sound of a crash soon after and hoping it was far enough away to confuse any pursuers and buy some time. Side by side, they sprinted through the raking, dead branches and tangled undergrowth for what felt like hours until they saw moss-covered concrete sinking into the earth.
                The thick steel door at the bottom of the damp, eroded staircase was a beacon of hope, something they might be able to hide behind for a few hours before sneaking out again. It was many hours before they noticed that the lock mechanism had worn and sheared, rendering it impossible to retract. 

                The realisation that they were trapped had been a hard one to swallow, a bitter pill at a time when nothing was sweet. At least, it had been at first. After the panic, the anger, and the fear of what was coming, there was a wave of relief. It spilled over them as an unexpected comfort, knowing that they could finally stop running. They could stop looking over their shoulders and plotting and planning and fighting. They could finally stop fighting. Their deaths had always felt inevitable in some way, but now that they could do nothing more it lifted the burden. Their fate was sealed, but this limbo, this meantime, was theirs to spend on themselves at last. For them, the war was over, and they could see out their retirement, brief as it would be, together – at least they had been granted that mercy. With the gramophone in the corner and the dancefloor beneath them, there was only one way for the situation to play out.

                Sophia and James lost themselves in one another’s eyes, and allowed everything except the music, the motion and each other to consume their consciousness. They were vaguely aware of the ’boom’ as the charges set around the door were detonated, and the vast chunk of steel slammed to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke. Shock troops of the Unseen stormed through, clad head to toe in matte black, but all the couple saw was one another. As the gunfire opened up they clung to each other, they gently turned to the rhythm, and they stood tall, together.

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